I’ve Walked Between That Cow

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety the only Doctor Who podcast, made up of three Silicon Chips specialising in Apple devices, architecture, and video game trivia. I'm Brendan. I'm Nathan. I'm a regional accent for this episode. Good afternoon, everyone, wherever we are. And it seems like it's a welcome return to racism for Doctor Who for to doomsday. So, the fourth member of the team is race, isn't it? Now, we have a slightly different kind of racism this time in Doctor Who, in that we don't have white guys slathered in makeup to be other races, although we do have West Indian actors portraying indigenous Australian characters, not Kakuchi. He is played by an indigenous actor. But yeah, we kind of have to address that head on. So for doomsday. First story recorded by Peter Davidson, a 2nd story broadcast, of course, because they had this idea that we need to get him into character before we show him being out of character in his 1st story. What do we think about that? I actually don't think it's a bad idea. I mean, one of the things about the post-regenerative trauma thing is that if the actor's taking a little while to kind of bed down his performance, um, you know, you can kind of forgive it because he's acting oddly, um, so it wasn't massively necessary because you've got, you know, 2.5 episodes of Pete lying in a cupboard essentially before he gets going. But here, you can actually see him working out what to do, and there are some things that he does here, that he later jettisons. I hate. I hate the bits where he goes out into the ship and he does these extravagant hand gestures to indicate how much he loves the technology. And then he comes in and calls Niss a young lady and says, you know, innovative, innovative stuff. He's all writing off over 5 years of the 1970s. I think he's pert for you. That is a verb. That is quite right, James. Another thing he jettisons is terrible puns. He has quite a few terrible puns over the course of this story. Do you think they're out living? It is Terrence Dudley. Um, I gather that it was Pete's idea and it just didn't really catch on and possibly the Nadir of it, which again ties in with the racism is I am Lin Fu too. I would never have guessed it. You look in the best of health to me. That is so awful. It's your racist grandfather joke. Oh, except it is Bert Cook. I mean, it is Peter Sellers, too, I see from all the Panther films. So it is Koto. So it's kind of expected. And we're going to meta it. And we should, of course, mentioned that as we record just a few days ago, Burt Cook has left us. He's passed away. And I did say to the FTE crew at the time, I do hope that somewhere up there, Peter Sellers is just waiting in a cupboard to get his revenge. But yeah, but Bert's rather good in this, I have to say. I mean, rather... Well, then we own him because he's been in everything. been in every bond. He's been in... Avengers. Speaking of whom, this is why this is actually one of lie. I'm sorry Todd's not here because he'd probably, he was saying similar things. This is a secret guilty favourite of season 19. Isn't it exciting to have Billy Hartnell back as the doctor? But just younger. It's Billy. He's doing Billy Ticks. The Billy Humour stuff. Even the MacGyver shtick that Pete wanted to keep in the bits of during the safety pins. MacGyver was created by Terry Nation. Let's not forget. They're all billy ticks. Yeah, absolutely. And Davison wanted his doctor to be someone who solved problems with items he just happened to have in his pockets, which is why you get the string and the pencil and the cricket ball. Aphylactics, the reses, all that kind of thing here. But are you doing sticks, yes. Are you aware of another earlier Avengers connection? Can we talk about mad scientist optometrists? Well, yes, Philip Locke, who plays bygone in this, is, of course Dr. Primble in Venus with Love. But going back even early. Tickles and menaces, Diana Riggs. Again, but as an optometrist, it makes no sense. But going back even further to one of the surviving episodes of the Avengers season one. The Frighteners. Philip Locke is the henchman, employed by a man called the Deacon who is in turn employed by a businessman played by Stratford Johns who plays monarch. So, yeah, 20 years old. 20 years on. He's really terrible. Stratford John. No, Stratford John's is brilliant. Philip Block is shockingly bad. No, okay. point of difference here. Well, there's that bit where he talks about the poison and he waves his arms around in this sort of just terrifically embarrassing way and he's always sort of wringing his hands and that kind of thing. He does the sort of dignified kind of stoic. Because he's trying to do all of that Socratic dialogue he with but not of stuff, isn't he? He's trying to look distant without the enchantment. He's literally the Greek chorus in this story. No, that's not true. The Greek chorus. is enlightenment, persuasion and monarch. That's true Commenting on the action, which I just think is terrifically funny. It's one of the best things ever. I love, you know, Stratford Johns asks the fabulous enlightenment what love is, and she explains it, she explains that it's the exchange of 2 fantasies, majesty. And you kind of go, that's the best difference. As yet. Yeah. This is one of the ones that on paper looks terrifically right in how to write a classic Doctor Who story. And I'm not just being flippant when I say this is exciting to have Billy back because season 19 feels so much like season one to me. It really does. Like that's something, and we'll talk about this more as we go on. I was amazed when I was rewatching it, looking at the connections between stories. I know a lot of people kind of make fun of them for being forced and we'll talk about the end of this story later. But at the same time, it does give you. It does give you a much needed sense of reality. And I say much needed because for the 1st time, we have 3 alien characters to one human character. You know, it's it's never happened before in the show that we've had more than a one-to-one ratio of human to alien. Or alien to human, rather. And speaking of, conceptually, this story is amazing. It is a bit like they are. Just without the slavery. ray for slavery. satire caption. I miss my security kitchen. We get the security mobiliary. And togers. We still get to go on. The concept that you have all these androids who are replicants of humans on a generational ship. You know, that's quite high concept from Doctor Who. It starts to fall apart slightly when the audience realises, but the characters never seem to realise that most of the cultures represented either no longer exist in that form, or are sufficiently changed that, you know, even Lin Fu 2 would probably have trouble negotiating with the Chinese people as monarch expects him to do, and certainly Kakuchi. Unfortunately, you know, for the last 200 years when this story takes place, the indigenous people of Australia have not been in control of the continent. No, isn't that fascinating? You want to call this racist, there's actually lots of undercurrents that from an historical perspective, they talk about who writes history and at what point does history cut off? Because as you just point out, In fact, yes, if we can slice this like a Damian Hearst cow. and find all different flavours as we go back through the beans. I've actually walked between that cow between the 2 halves in the tape bottom. We haven't come to the companions. So I actually think that, like we say it's racist, there are some unfortunate moments. It's the use of the word aborigine to refer to an aboriginal man which is not racist as such. It's just old-fashioned. It was also, it was not uncommon. Yeah, yeah. And the use of the word Chinaman twice, which I think is slightly embarrassing. But it is well-intentioned. In that, it's non-European cultures, like all of the of the 4 cultures, only one guy is European. The rest are all from different continents. There are some unfortunate things about it. So the sort of cultural appropriation thing is a little bit awkward and embarrassing. I actually just find myself cringing a little bit when the sacred sort of ceremonial dancing thing is happening. Have we mentioned colonialism yet? Again, tick, Billy. Yeah, yeah. Placeless ones, actually, too, with the way that the people are stored, but, oh, my God, in a way that you can freeze a thought shrink people down and erase down. You can shrink the whole concept of a race down to a dance or a mask or a descriptor. Yeah, no, I think that's that's true. And I also think that of the 4 cultures, the only one who gets a sort of really sympathetic representative is the white European guy. And yeah, and cane toads in space. They get quite a. They do. Yeah, they're sympathetically portrayed, aren't they? As cane toads, definitely. Because, of course, the reason we get bygone as our, as our primary guest rebel character is, he says that Velagria, Kakuchi and Lin Futu have all been corrupted by the desire for power because they're on European? I don't know. No, because Greek, ancient Athens, like Athens is a democracy. So they're more advanced politically than these other cultures. Yeah, you know, so there is, so all of that stuff's unintentional and unfortunate. I don't think it's consciously racist in the way that I think the arc is, you know, like deliberately racist. Yes. But can we go back to the idea that this is a Hartnell story because I want to argue against that really vociferously. Really? Yeah. The standard the standard thing about it being a Hartnell story is that the characters are exploring a world and discovering things about the world and we spend the 1st episode basically with the 4 regulars, you know, going around the place, interacting with the environment and gradually getting to know everyone. I think that's fair enough. But, There's a thing about the 4 regulars that I really, really dislike, and I may as well get this off my chest during 4 doomsday so that I can go on and on about it at length over the next, you know, few weeks. And that is, when we've had 4 characters for main characters in the past. The characters of all had definable kind of relationships with one another, so there was Barbara Ian and Susan. There's Ben and Polly and Jamie, and they're all kind of relatable. They're all identifiable. There's a really definite kind of attempt to make them people who are part of our world, who are put into the, you know, weird action adventure, fantasy series. Here, it's just, you know, like a bunch of people who've hung around inexplicably from previous episodes who really don't have anything very much to do with each other. And certainly episode one where they're all wandering around that room spouting horrific techno battle at each other. It's something Hartner would have, you know, he would never have been able to say that. He would have locked the doors and left. But I think and he don't think he hasn't got form. He's done it with his own family. This, um, you've just summed up why season 19 for all the glorious glossy bits. We might as well just finish now because why it falls flat on its on its soft palate, you know? on its terrible accents because it's really, that's what it just keeps doing. And we can we keep talking about, can we just go, this one is and story arcing for season 19 before we start. But we talk about Doctor Who always being superior to other series because we had story arts and we had character development. We don't get that in this season. And already these companions have been around. We've known them since Tom. They don't seem to have developed a relationship with each other at all. They're bickering. They're the only one that seems to be going there slightly is Adric, because he keeps giving Nissa the side EI. Yeah, well, he's horrible to both, Mr. and Tegan. I'm just sort of sexist and unpleasant for no reason. And someone in the cast who picked up on this lack of development and especially lack of character continuity between stories, was actually Matthew Waterhouse. And he raised it. Later or at the time? No, no, he, well, he says he raised it at the time and was sort of told, oh, look, just say the lines. And we've talked about him sometimes being naive on the set, but he seems to have had the self-awareness to kind of go, okay, I know when I'm not going to win a battle. But what he said in particular about 4 to doomsday. is that 1st of all, he kind of objected to the whole, he did object to the whole sexist dialogue thing. And I think that might be because, you know, when Adrik comes aboard the TARDIS, Roman is the smartest person on it, he never gives her any shift for being a woman. You know, he never gives her any trouble for that. He wouldn't dare. But the main... We would, actually, roots to him. Bitme didn't dare. you know, you'd soon try. I think that's the thing too. This is a very young cast. The main thing he objected to, though, for the character of Adrick was, the whole thing about going along with monarch. He kind of said, no, we've done this. We did this in the vampire one, and it's revealed at the end that he's actually just playing for time, but in this, there's no reveal of that. And John Black. the next week as well, in fact. John Black or whoever it was just said to him, oh, just say the lines, Matthew. And so the way Matthew started playing it was, he thought to myself, right, I'm not going to get any character continuity between stories. I would just try to make the logic of the story work in each story. He's like, that's all I can do because I'm arguing that this happened last week and nobody cares. It's like watching Voyager with one 8th of the budget. Which makes Adrick 7 of nine. I think one eighth of the budget. Exactly thinking that too. Six of one, half a dozen of another, more like. Well, of course, Nicola Bryant, who we haven't got to yet, was on the short list for Captain Janeway. was 3rd choice. No. So it was Genevieve Bujol, who was who walked after 2 day shooting. Catherine Hepburn who was dead. So they got Kate Mulgrew. But yeah, Nicola Bryant, like got to the camera, got to the camera thing. Do we have that? Does that exist? I don't think it does. I don't think it can you imagine? Can't we move to the nearby parallel universe in this cast? I wanna live there. I thought you would have been lying. But also, there's a Voyager video now, which is every utterance of some sort of or some kind of, and it gets into the 300s. What are you doing? Yeah, what are you doing here? But yeah, you know, so Matthew Waterhouse was thinking about as character. And of course, at this stage, Sarah Sutton was going to be written out shortly and Peter Davidson campaigned for her to remain. So they had to keep paying Johnny Byrne to use her. Is that why they were going to ride around? Well, that's why next week she's only at the beginning and at the end, because they'd already written Kinder not to feature her. Right. And we're spending a lot of time. That's why she had the salt. She's spending a lot of time in her room building vibrating devices. Yeah, yeah, she is. I had to get it. More on that story later. Back to 4 to Doomsday. Monarch Enlightenment and Persuasion. A word on monarch. Some viewers at the time may have recognised his character from a certain giant green frog in an animated series, namely Baron Greenback in Danger Mouse. However, this was this was recorded before, but broadcast after Danger Mouse. So any similarity is completely coincidental. Anyone who hasn't met Brendan, if you put him in a white skivvy. It's actually quite... The thing is, the voices are so, so very close. When you were little, you were penfold, but you're bigger now. Yes. I did actually once buy a blue a blue chalk stripe suit to be Penfold because my boyfriend at the time was much taller and he wouldn't be Danger Mouse. Which is why he's now dead. Annie Lambert, of course, it was bugging me where I recognised her from. Richard, do you know where I recognise her from? Well, I'm trying to remember her from that episode of the New Avengers, where she undresses Mike Gambit. Correct. But she was also hanging about and she's kind of poor man's picnic at Hanging Rock, isn't she? But she's, um, gosh, she was in a lot of those British things looking wispy and lovely and about to, um, about to put on stockings and comport about in a Frenchy type romantic flick. She was that sort of girl. Is this the point? speaking of monarch and persuasion, but they were the names of Lenin's ministries of propaganda. He had a ministry of enlightenment and a ministry of persuasion. And it was the, um, it was the ladder that put the money up for Serjai Eisenstein's career, which is why we have Ptyemka, and things like that. So not quite at the German period of film, but we are actually back at the Russian expression. And of course, monarch does say that a class system is essential for good government. There's lots of little lines. Yeah, there's lots of, which we think are all well, but they're actually men. There's so many great ideas in this that just don't quite get pulled off. And I do kind of blame Terence Dudley for that because. Do you though? Because look at the Heartnell era. It's usually direction. Yeah, John Black is not good. I mean, that's a lie. That's not true. There are some great moments. I love the bit, like the monopolican point of view shots where the hat goes on the monopolican and comes off. There's some beautiful lighting. I think the lighting is great. I think the sets are terrific. But as Todd observed in our canine and company commentary, He does have a huge obsession with people going through doors. Yes. Oh, yeah, he does. Yeah, he does. I got horribly drunk doing that. I gave up counting after 20 doors on this button. What I do love about the doors on this one is how they light up before they open. You don't even get that on Star Trek. But my favourite thing. And, you know, this is a heart and all thing. Very early on. Tegan goes, look. And then 5 seconds later, the door lights up and opens. It's the procognizance of the heart, the lira going, look, a special effect is about to happen because I can see someone's shadow behind the set. Oh, the problem is that we look at the things that we loved about Billy's era and Patty's actually where I think that all became more cohesive. And the team, I think, is trying to feel more like the trout, the crew. But there's no cohesion. No. And there's no love and and just think that I can, maybe we can blame neo-conservative politics, ragonomics, statonomics, maybe we can just blame the Cold War and the threat of a new illness that really did, we did think it was going to lob a 3rd of the population, more of that when we get to visitation. But, you know, the HIV virus. It did look like it was going to kill a lot of people. Um, and it did. But, That's no reason to put all of that into a family television program. I just, I really think it's just the inaptitude and I'm going to blame the script editor. I blame the producer, actually. I think it comes from on high. Except that we have the same producer as last year and last year was great. You know. But last year wasn't great for character. You did have some strong established cast members. And they argued against the production values of a coming down from the bridge. They weren't going to do. They weren't going to play it the way. You know, it's like Bala was saying, we need some jokes here. Chris and John. We actually this needs to be fun for the little kids. Yeah. And can I just say, I did have this one on video as a child, but the opening scenes scared me. sort of the ship slowly moving through space, which is a crib from Alien, and it actually looks really good. And the sort of darkened laboratory scared me as a kid and I would switch it off. When I finally got around to watching it. The character quirks that Peter puts in here in his performance. I really wish he'd kept a few more of those. And indeed, it's not entirely his fault because he was told, you know, tone down the humour, don't make jokes, don't make pums, we don't want you to be like Tom, et cetera, et cetera. And I think we do lose something there because he's awkward pums. He knows they're awkward. He doesn't think, like, Peter doesn't think they're good jokes, but the doctor thinks they're good jokes, and it kind of makes him endearing. Like, you're having a ball. And you kind of get Adrocanist. I'll look at each other like, what's a pun? That works. That works. And it's a shame we didn't keep that on. A characterisation element that doesn't work in this and we've touched on this before. Is Tegan? Oh, she's awful in this. And Tegan must get better, but that the panicky idiot crying and she's still doing her panto acting thing, which she she stops doing in the very next story, I would I would argue. Todd reckons Black Orchid once she has a few drinks on the crown least. said that as well, I agree. It was black. Right now, yeah, right now. Yeah, it's her 2nd story and she's overacting horrifically. And, and, you know, those scenes in the TARDIS, and I don't know why we have so many scenes in the TARDIS this season. You're not allowed to get off the ship without being in the big white room. And those scenes are just embarrassing to watch, I think, with her sort of crying and laughing and kicking the manual and crying again. Awful. The one I the one I really have a problem with. And you know, we're trying to build a relationship with these characters. We've just had Castra Valva, where the doctor had that lovely speech about, you are the navigator, you are the coordinator you're the healer and all this. That was nice, yeah. And, you know, what do we see between Tegan and Adrick in this story? He is utterly a sexist pig to her. She gives him a concussion. Oh, I love that. She smacks him about and he knocks his head against something. We've met Janet Fielding at college. We're easy to believe. Probably improvise. She punched me in the face. It was awesome. She kissed me on the cheek. Did you know she did car ads in secret in Japan in the 1980s? Did I know that? Did you know her hair was insured for $10,000? Did you know she was actually Rachel McAdo? Mean girls, but they just shopped her face up, shocked, not shocked, thanks, yeah. That's how powerful down the building. This scene is something I do have a bit of a problem with because you know, Doctor Who's always been under fire for imitable violence. And yet one of the regulars throwing the other regular into something and knocking him unconscious passes without comment. And I was like, you know, yes, he's being a pig to her. But, This is a directly violent situation between 2 of the regulars and nobody comments on it. Like, Adric doesn't say to the doctor, she knocked me out. The doctor doesn't tell off Tegan for nicking the TARDIS. The original concept here was that when they decided to keep Nissa Tegan would feature in 3 stories. So Lucopoulos, Castravalva, 4 to Doomsday, and she would do something in 4 to Doomsday where the doctor would be forced to say listen, you cannot act like this if we are to work together. You stay or you go your choice. We have the setup for that, but no payoff. Why do you think they didn't happen? I honestly don't know, because, you know, it was in the production document. The only thing I can think of is, you know, this script comes in the awkward time between Anthony Root and Eric Saywood. I used to call it the dark times. Dark times. Um, you know, so I think it was commissioned by Bidmead. Um, worked on by Anthony Root, and then, say, word came in, and and I don't often make excuses for say word. I think fairly wanted to get on with the job he wanted to do. You know, it's a bit like when Andrew Cartmel comes in later, he kind of washes his hands of time in Iranian Paradise Towers because he's like, you know, I will do my, I will do my due diligence on them, but this is not my vision. I think Eric Say would, for better or for worse, possibly have that feeling about for the doomsday as well. I think it'd be better if he had very little to do with it. We will get to why I think this works at the end, but I want to hear what you're saying 1st because I don't want to just, you know the opposite on many podcasts is not listening, it's waiting. I don't want that to be this episode. I want to make it clear that I really actually like this story. You and I both. And as fondly as I remember it as a 13 year old, I found it just as enjoyable and on other reasons. And the race isn't cut if we're going to come back to that. Yeah, sure, but for 1982 when we were watching this, it was extraordinary seeing people being allowed to simply represent cultures as if it's a matter of course, and yet, it didn't feel, it didn't feel token to me. It felt like a ruse. It was there to, yes, amuse themselves, but also, you know, as a way to, in the best possible way to affect political change under a mask. of appropriated culture. So they were being cute, but they were planning something. Yeah, I think my over my overarching feeling about the story is it gets about 60% of where it wants to go. Yeah, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves, don't we? Yeah. But also, just picking up on something, you said there, Richard. I really enjoy seeing the other cultures here and I just wish their characters have been fleshed out more like Bygone's character. Unintended, but yes, they they... Oh yeah, flesh time. And, you know, it kind of means that at the end, when they're all happy and smiling, really artificially, like the end of Scooby-Doo you... Look, look, look at the dearly loved Bert Quok, you know, it's just, it's obvious, he's just been told, okay, smile at everyone. Okay, who do you want me to smile at first? Go, just smile at everyone. So he is manically twisting his neck to make sure he gets a smile in at everyone before the end of the shot. It's a genius move. Have a look at it. The weird thing is, it doesn't feel unfinished in the same way that other 80s Doctor Who will feel unfinished, which is they feel visually unfinished and the paint's literally still drying. This feels conceptually unfinished, which is a pity because monarch is a fascinating character and this whole idea he can travel faster than light and then he might meet God. wonderful high concept. 60s SF writing right there. a really good way. You know, I kind of wish that they had, that they had gone faster than I, and that would be his hubris moment instead of just, oh I'm going to shrink you and put you under this helmet. It's almost getting to Vonnegut level concept, but again, that's probably just us filling it in. So my objection with it is that I just think it's horrifically slow and that a huge proportion of it consists of characters wandering around from set to set discovering things. Through doors? Very brutally. Prettily lit, but the plot seems to have no particular momentum. And I just think not enough happens. So I think that's a big problem. So the 1st 2 cliffhangers, there's no peril because nothing is happening yet. We're still learning about the world. And, you know, like having a bit of space to learn about the world that's cool. I love arc in space episode one where much more likeable and entertaining people are wandering around a spaceship of some kind. But, you know, the fact that there's no peril in the Clichangato episode one, where the fabulous enlightenment and persuasion sort of swan in in what Tegan sketched. And there's none in episode 2 where you get the bygone reveal. Oh, can we talk about Philip Lock's timing? It's an avocado pair. See, it was shockingly bad. But then the Cliffhanger to episode 3 is really just sort of crappily artificial and it's the 1st of 2 the doctor's about to have his head hacked off. There's just not enough actually happening. There's not enough peril. There's a great deal of word peril, you know, like the title doomsdays in the title. So something bad must be about to happen, but what, you know wouldn't a much more fun story have been, you know, monarch arriving on earth or something? You know, like it's just budget. Yeah, no. Bob Baker and Dave Martin would have written the hell out of that. We had that. was called Torchwood. I think I prefer this. Oh god, yes. You know, I was just thinking that the implication is that as the doctor is trying to get Tegan back to her flight, they get drawn off course and land on Monarch ship. And, you know, as I was saying earlier, no one kind of points out that certainly with the Mayan and indigenous Australian civilisations, things aren't the same as when Monarch was last here. But, you know, what if the episode 3 Cliffhanger was, actually it's 1450. So monarch can change history and can take over the world with these cultures. Do you think Cartwell watched this as a slightly younger boy. I think he was only 12 when he took over everything, Doctor Who. But we are really almost a ghost life, at least in the premise. You know, yeah, it's just lots of great concepts, not entirely done well. But there are there are far greater crimes in Doctor Who than that. Doctor Who is always done on a rush, no more so than as we'd later discover from all the regulars this year, and especially the next that it's done so quickly that we'll soon not even be rehearsing. You get the script, you perform it. That's it. Looking forward to Frontios there. But there's, for all of that, Doctor Who's also about what else it conjures and what else it brings in. It's always more than what it shows us, and that's the point. It's actually, you know, it's actually on us as viewers. To continue that narrative, just as it is for in any performance of a play, when the audience is expected, that background knowledge and to supply imagination. We're expected to do the same thing, I guess. Part of the relationship that is watching doctor. Sorry, still, you shouldn't have to bloody make it up for yourself. Italian, shouldn't it? Freaking MasterChef. Unfortunately, dear listener, Richard's just fainted, so we're taking him to a garden centre to recover. Where's me crimping on? Come back next week as we talk about Kinder. Don't forget, you can buy this online at flightsthroughentirety com. Flight through entirety on Facebook and iTunes and FTE podcast on Twitter over on Bondfinger. We've recently started the Roger Moore era of James Bond films. We're probably about halfway through by now, who can say? And similarly on Doctor Who in 10 seconds on YouTube. I've maybe got up to season 4 by now. I have no idea. But until next week, may none of your Android arms fall into a bank and hands. Thank you very much for listening and good night. Good night. It's got 3 settings. Good night. That was Flight Through Entirety with Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones and Richard Stone, theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb. This episode, I've walked between that cow, was recorded on the 28th of May 2016. Next episode will be released on June 26th. Please stay tuned for the usual blooper, as well as a bit I recorded after the episode and couldn't figure out where to edit it in. Four to doomsday. Four to doomsday. 28th of June. May. 28th of May. Can't be 28th of June. I be out of a job again next week. Oh, sweetie, that's exciting. Yeah, new contract's only 5 weeks. Maywigs in June. And be why you got confused. I do love the gray. All the gray. Oh, gray. Okay, this is a nice toast. So do we have to talk about forwarder doom today? I can't remember a thing about it. The unsung heroes of this story, of course, are the Chinese lion dance performers, who were actually the wait staff from the production team's local favourite Chinese restaurant and were represented by their maitre d', who got them a better deal than the other extras.